Presented by Claro

Rafael Cordero, Director of IT and Facilities at The Riviera Ridge School, joins the podcast to discuss his unique dual role. He shares how a background in project management and cybersecurity prepared him to manage everything from network infrastructure to campus operations, and how he aligns these efforts to create a future-ready learning environment.

• Riviera Ridge School
• Rafael’s LinkedIn profile
• NYSAIS Education, Information, and Technology (NEIT), conference produced by New York State Association of Independent Schools (NYSAIS)
• JAMF, enterprise Apple product management and security
• ATLIS Leadership Institute (ALI), education and networking program designed to prepare and support technology leaders in independent schools
• Photos of Christina’s daughter’s “new teacher supplies haul”, Photo 1 | Photo 2

Nick, welcome to Talking technology with Atlas,

the show that plugs you into the important topics and trends for

technology leaders all through a unique Independent School lens.

We'll hear stories from technology directors and other

special guests from the Independent School community,

and provide you with focused learning and deep dive topics.

And now please welcome your host. Kristina llewellen,

hello everyone, and welcome back to

talking technology with Atlas. I'm Kristina llewellen, the CEO

and President of the Association of technology leaders in

independent schools.

And I am Bill Stites, the Director of

Technology at Montclair Kimberly Academy in Montclair, New

Jersey. Hello, Bill. It's you and me today, friend and we are

better for it. Oh, I'm just kidding. I miss Hiram. Of

course, I miss Hiram. I jest.

Actually, I was kind of looking forward to

seeing Hiram today, because I was going to ask how you guys

are doing. You are in these frantic final moments of summer

at the time of our recording. Oh, 100% so I think that maybe

it's even better for me that there's just one of you, plus

our guest, because I don't know that I can manage all of the

stress and anxiety all at once. You know, I think I can just

handle you, and then maybe next time, I'll have a therapy

session with him. How about that?

This is like the calm before the wake that

introduces the storm. Because right now, as we're recording,

it's on a Friday, on Tuesday, we have all of our new employees

coming, so we do like a what we call New Teacher Institute. It's

actually new employee Institute, nice, but it's a Tuesday,

Wednesday, Thursday, where all the new employees come in. They

get oriented to the school, they get their legs under them in the

building, particularly here at our middle school, which is

where my office is. It's a maze, so people get to figure out the

maze that is the building. And then the following week, Monday

through Thursday, that's when we have everyone's back full blown

in service before we welcome the kids back, just after Labor Day.

So you are ramping up. And what's crazy,

Bill is I feel like we just had this conversation for the 2425

school year. Yep, and now we're having it for the 2526 school

year. Like, What is even happening

summer goes by in a blink of an eye, and I think

September is just as bad. You know, when September hits the

doors open and the next thing I notice people are putting out

stuff for Halloween, and I'm like, where did September go?

Yep, it goes fast. So I really wish that

Hiram was here for this story. I'll have to just text him in

our group chat, but I have something real quick to tell

you. So this past week, I was out in LA on the west coast for

ASAE, which is the American Society of Association

Executives, and it's like the conference for all the

association people like me. And as it turns out, my sister in

law, the lovely Liz Lewellen, she retired from teaching after,

I think, 38 years from a California School District.

That's awesome. So what happened was we had dinner in LA she

drove up through crazy traffic, and we had some lovely sushi,

and as we sat there, we realized that in just one year's time,

daughter Caitlin will be setting up her classroom for the very

first time. So Liz went home and made it her mission to send me

home with every allowable pound via United Airlines of teacher

supplies. So I flew out with a simple little garment bag full

of stuff to wear to my conference, and I flew home with

approximately 150 pounds worth of teacher supplies.

That's awesome.

And I got home a little bit late, a few

delays. I walk into my house. It had to be almost 10 o'clock. My

daughter was waiting for me, stalking me on life 360 and as

soon as I walked in the door, she was pulling those things

apart. There was borders, there were magnets, there were timers,

there were pouches. There's so much stuff, bulletin board

things and notes and celebrations for the kids. And I

was a little overwhelmed, I just gotta say,

Oh, I'm sure my father used to bribe my wife to

come help set up the room. Just given because my father was a

classroom teacher as well, just given the amount of stuff,

particularly over that amount of time, it's amazing what you hold

on to and what you carry with you.

Yeah, I mean, she basically said, I have

sent you with 115 of the pile that I walked out of that school

with, and I said, Well, I'm just gonna have to come back out to

California and see you more often. Take use of my free bags

on the way home with my status. So anyways, I thought that was

super fun. And I'll have to send pictures in the group chat.

We'll also see if we can put them in the show notes. She was

pretty excited, my daughter, that's awesome. Well, let's get

on to today's show. I'm super excited. We are welcoming today

Rafael Cordero. Rafael is from the Riviera Ridge school in

Santa Barbara, California. So joining us from the West Coast,

Rafael, if I come see you, I'm not taking home 150 pounds worth

of stuff.

I'm just saying, well, thanks for having me.

Yeah, we're so. Grateful you joined us. You

are the director of IT and facilities at the Riviera Ridge

school. We'll dive into that a little bit, but we know you at

Atlas for a couple different reasons. You've been involved

with some of our programming here at Atlas, and you come

highly recommended as somebody to chat with, because there's a

lot of ground to cover. But one of the things I want to start

with, we always ask everybody a little bit about their

background, and we'll do that with you, too. But what's really

cool to me is that you have a master's degree in it, and that

focus is on cybersecurity, so you really come from more of the

IT and safety side of the house. So we're gonna definitely dig

into that. But why don't we start by having you tell us a

little bit about your journey and how it is that you found

yourself in a California Independent School?

Well, like you said, I was in at least a couple

of years ago, in the at least Leadership Institute. We were in

Fourth Ward in Texas, and I had a blast. It was one of the

things that you do that helped you understand how school works

and how things are pretty much in place for school. The teams,

everybody was so helpful. It helped me just deepen my

understanding of strategic, it planning and how to Align

Technology Initiatives with the school brother mission. My

background, I have a very interesting background. It's not

exactly traditional. I'm from Venezuela. I used to be a

project manager, and I really appreciate the fact that, in my

background, being a project manager, I was able to bring

that into my experience into it working in schools, and

definitely have the ability to understand and to apply those

skills into my daily work. For me, it's more important to

understand what we do and the value that we bring to the work

that we do every day.

So Raphael, you came into this mix with this

strong cyber IT background, but then, as you mentioned, you went

through the Atlas Leadership Institute. Can you tell me a

little bit about how that rounded things out, and did that

help on the education, ed tech side of things?

Absolutely, I did my master's degree in

California, Lutheran University. I learned a lot about

cybersecurity, which is my specialty, and when I applied to

the director of IT position at Riviera rich school, one of the

things that came up in the interview was Tell me about that

cybersecurity experience. And I was like, Well, this is a new

thing, not a new thing, but like we schools were experiencing a

lot of cybersecurity attacks, and I'm here to help set that

up. I think that's the part of the cybersecurity that we bring

into the table when it comes to help schools navigate through

those challenges in the everyday operations.

One of the things I was actually really curious

about was your experience with project management. I remember,

for me, at least going back to one of my other favorite

conferences outside of the Atlas conference is the New York

Association runs this neat conference. It's any IT

conference and talking to a colleague there, Cole and

Samuel, about the work that he did to get his project

management certificate. And one of the things I've always been

envious of, actually, one of my colleagues has his degree in

project management. How has that background in project management

and the skills that you've been able to bring over from that

helped you in your current job?

When I started working at Rivia rich school,

they were in a process of rebuilding the whole

infrastructure, so I started putting all my ideas and my

effort pretty much into the IT infrastructure, which has to do

with all the cybersecurity protocols, like all the building

infrastructure, all the network infrastructure, which was a lot

of work to put into it, I was able to actually change the

whole infrastructure in about eight months, I was lucky to

bring fiber optic to school, which our school is located in a

beautiful hill in Santa Barbara, and as a 11 and a half acres

campus is really hard with different buildings, all

buildings, it's really, really hard to just transform that into

a space, in terms of technology, into a space where internet

works and everybody's able to use internet as well as every

other school my expertise helped a lot. And. Regard. So my

project management seals. A year after that, it's so funny

because my boss, one day sent me down and asked me, I need help

with the facilities team, and I need you to help me manage that.

And so we're going to combine those two, because you've done

an amazing job building up the infrastructure. So I want you to

help me with that management part. And that's how I started

managing all the facilities team in conjunction to all the IT

infrastructure as well.

That can happen a lot at independent

schools. In fact, as we were jumping on this pod, I'm

confirming your title, and you were like, Oh, wait, that's

changed. So you've evolved, right to now be director of IT

and facilities. So that's interesting, and we're seeing

some more of that weirdly. Or maybe not, maybe that's not

weird. I don't know, Bill, do you think that's weird that

we're seeing that combination? Or is it just like these things

kind of go in ebbs and flows, or in waves of like sometimes we

move away from being either in the facility space or responding

to reporting to the facility space. Now it looks like we're

going back that way, because it seems to make sense in a lot of

ways with the Internet of Things.

To me, it's very interesting because, you know, I

work very closely here at MKA with our director of buildings,

grounds and security. That's the title here. It's the same thing.

But, you know, work very closely with him, and I think a lot of

what we do on what I'll call the IT infrastructure pieces really

align with a lot of the work that your facilities department

deal with, because we're both involved in one way or another

with the security aspects of things we're both involved with,

the running, or what I'll call the plumbing of the school. From

a facility side, it's actually the plumbing and the

electricity, where that all runs. We're all in it from the

wireless, from getting all those connection points. So there's a

good deal of alignment between the two areas that really does

interest me. We both need help desk systems. We both need to

respond to the same sort of problems and requests that come

in and out. And I think while I haven't seen a lot of people

that have your exact title with that oversight of that

department as a whole, I definitely see as we start

talking about a lot of these things, phone systems, all these

things that at one point I think back to, like before, our

phones, our doors, all of those things lived with the facilities

department. But now, because they plugged in as soon as they

required a network connection, it was like, all right. It now

needs to be involved. So it brings you in. And the one thing

I'm curious about in what you're doing because, for instance,

we're going through a construction project right now,

which is another area of alignment between the two, is I

sit in those meetings, and I feel the same way people

probably feel when they sit in an IT meeting with all the

acronyms and all the names I'm sitting there half the time

googling what the different things are that they're talking

about, because I don't know what show beams are. I don't know

what these different flanges or whatever they're talking about

from a building perspective goes. So what I'm really curious

about from your perspective in this I can see it from the

project management standpoint. I can see it from the

organizational standpoint in terms of the alignment of those

pieces. But when you get into the specifics of, how does this

boiler work, how do these cooling systems work, are you

overseeing to that level, or do you then have your people that

have the expertise in that level, and you're really guiding

it at 1000 foot level, and then you are, from a project

management standpoint, are you then empowering and enabling

people to then take those pieces on and move with those because I

can't imagine you've got that background skill set and all

those different areas?

Yeah, yeah, that'd be crazy.

Yes, I'm totally agree with you. I mean, from an

infrastructure perspective, like you say, because everything is

plugged into it now and then, so you have to be involved in all

the meetings. And then the lingo is one of the things that are

more challenging when it comes to like you said, Oh, what is

this? What is it? Coiling? What is that? So we have a director

of Campus operations, but what I do is I guide the facilities

team and to what their daily tasks are. We use a ticketing

system, which is called FMX. I don't know if you're familiar

with it, and so my job in the beginning was to train them how

to use it. And because I, you know, my boss, feel really

comfortable about the way I deliver all the training and all

that. So she thought that it was a good idea to just like, Okay,

well, it makes more sense for you to manage the team. And

because. And be lingual, then the communication was more

aligned into that. But I support the campus operation manager

into all the things that had to do with that, because she's also

new in the role, so she doesn't manage all that lingo as well.

And it's interesting, when you said everything is connected to

the it nowadays. Yes, I cannot be more agree with you when you

said that, because when you build a secure and scalable

network that supports the need of campus, everything ties to

it, like the phone system, like the camera system, so nobody in

my team knows exactly how to do like, we have a very good

security system in my team people rather not to just like,

Okay, well, I'm gonna check in the cameras, because it's, you

know, it's a complex. You have to know it to really know how to

find a video a certain time in, like, faster way, like it's they

don't want to add to their plates. And in any other

schools, we wear different hats, and I think that's a culture in

in our school.

It's interesting too, because I think when you

think about all the building systems, whether it's the

cameras, whether it's the access control, whether it's the

building management systems that manage the HVAC, the heating,

cooling, the probes that are out there on all of those things, I

subscribe probably to an unhealthy amount, but a number

of different list serves, you know, the Cecil list serve, the

K 12, six or, you know, there's a New Jersey version of these

things, and I can tell you that at least a third of the warnings

that come out vis a vis those channels are related to

operational pieces that will impact schools, whether it's

like alerts about Honeywell Siemens, whether it's alerts

about X and Y, different systems. So for us, where we

used to be concerned about cyber threats related to the

information systems that we use, the tools that are used in the

classroom, a lot of these penetration points now seem to

be focused on a lot of these operational systems that are put

into school to manage all these things. So as we talk through

this, as you mentioned, all these things, it's just

reinforcing a lot of what I see, and I believe to be true, that

the threat landscape for what schools have to deal with has

broadened significantly since where we were 1015, years ago,

speaking as the old gray beard in the room, so to speak, that

focus has changed and our jobs have changed so drastically.

Yeah, the scope 100% and I'm thinking about my job

description. I'm like, I haven't looked at my job description in

20 years, and I need to really look at it and rewrite it,

you know, chat GPT can do that for you,

bud, I know,

but to redo this, to try to figure it out, because

the scope of all the visitor management, I mean, just all of

these things that tie into not just physical security, but like

on campus security, all of these things, I'm tail spinning here

as I think about where I am at everything you know,

right, Right, right. I agree with you in that

position, because, I mean, for me, my passion is technology,

right? That's what I went to school for, and my philosophy is

that technology always needs to be seamless and secure, and if

you have that as to be visible when it's working, has to be

robust behind the scenes. So if you have that in place, I think

the job that we have as IT directors is to learn, because

my boss is always going to come to me when it comes to, oh,

integration, right? Same thing with all the LMS Sis, you have a

way to say, Okay, well, how about the subscriptions? How

about like Blackbaud and how about like we use different

systems across the school that always need my input, and as a

directors, you know it directors, you have to be

involved in all that.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a late

addition to the pod. Oh, wow, Hiram, you're here.

Hello, I made it. Ah, when you're spending a

couple $100 per hour for support, you have to be on those

calls.

You know what? That's actually a

brilliant segue, Hiram. We were just talking about all sorts of

Internet of Things, type issues at schools today and how much is

on the infrastructure. Because Raphael, our guest today, has a

new title, which is director of IT and facilities.

Ooh. Is that a new thing?

Yeah, I was gonna say you were doing it by proxy.

Anyway. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm so glad you were able to join us.

You'll hear when this pod drops that we were lamenting you being

gone. And now I don't need to drop the whole story in the

chat, our group chat. So welcome Hiram. One of us was lamenting.

I was lamenting.

He'll be quiet.

Well, Raphael, thank you for rolling

with our interruption, our happy interruption. Here, I want to

take a moment to just ask about your school. So we kind of

jumped right in to all of the stuff that you oversee, because

that's the interesting part, for sure. But can you tell us a

little bit about your school? You've been on the west coast

for a while, and at your previous school, you also did

some teaching, but let us know a little bit about your school in

those beautiful hills of Santa Barbara. What is it like at the

Riviera Ridge school?

Oh, my God. Okay, so imagine coming into a

beautiful town, which is Santa Barbara. That's the first thing

that you see. And then Riviera Ridge School is in a really,

really good part of town, which is at the top of the Riviera.

You have views everywhere around you. From a visual perspective,

every parent that comes to school always stops and say, Oh,

wow. This is a beautiful view. Oh, wow. This is a beautiful

campus for us, it's headache in the background, but I'm sure,

I'm sure, not a headache. I mean in terms of infrastructure,

that's what I mean, right? Because when you have different

buildings, like I said before, you have old buildings that they

didn't have technology back then, they didn't have cables

running all the way through back in the day.

So, so you're retrofitting a lot,

yes. So when you start a project, you have to

really start where things are, because some of the buildings in

my school are also protected because they're part of the

historic things of Santa Barbara. So when it comes to

projects that are big projects. Do you sometimes have to go

through the city ask for permission and all

that? What kind of student population do

you guys have?

We currently are around 250 students. We go from

JK all the way through eighth grade, awesome.

So you are a feeder school to probably some

other options. Do you find that most of your students end up

going to other independent schools for their high school

career, or do they integrate with public what's generally the

pathway?

It's a very interesting question. Most

students yes, they merge into we have a few private school, high

schools in Santa Barbara. There's one really close to us,

and yeah, they merge. They do both. There's good public

education in Santa Barbara. So usually schools go, like, to two

or three after they graduate. We have, like, probably three or

four that usually parents go to cool.

I have one more question, actually,

speaking of parents, and that is, it seems as though most

schools in California often have a notable parent population,

maybe not every school, certainly, but in certain

pockets of California, there's going to be some, either

celebrity or high ranking officials or business people

whose children go to that school. Is that partially why

you seem to be especially for a k8 you seem to be very security

forward compared to some of your peers in other areas of the

country. Is safety a parent driven thing? Is it an

administration driven thing. Kind of curious why you guys are

so good at that.

Thank you. Thank you. And yes, 100% parents. It

doesn't matter. We have high profile parents too within our

community, but most parents, when they come to tours, two

questions that they ask, one is security, because it's really

important for them, especially because we're in a location that

is pretty much an open campus, but at the same time, it's a

very secure area in Santa Barbara, but internally for us,

we get a lot of questions about security, for sure, and the

second question that people ask is technology, especially for

the little ones. How do you deliver technology to these

little children? Because it seems like, right now, there is

a whole topic about no screens for kids, and how do we manage

both side of the stories, I am a huge advocate for technology, of

course, in the classroom, and how teachers use it. But my

administration, they really take a good eye on how we split that.

Because we have a open campus. We have a lot of green areas.

Where people can go gardens and stuff. So I think the philosophy

of my school is like, Okay, well, let's see how we can

deliver education without technology in some ways, and so

kids can experience both. So yeah, security, for sure, is a

big question when parents come to campus. And what do

you think of your overall technology

philosophy? Do you say that you guys are sort of tech forward?

Are you a little more reserved? Does it really vary by, I'm

sure, grade level in the Lower School? But as you do have these

kids matriculating into other schools in the area, do they

have to be a little bit AI literate, or have that digital

citizenship to sort of make sure they're ready to head off to

their high schools elsewhere.

Let me dive in a little bit into the academic

side, right in my role, for example, I partnered with

faculty just to make sure that, you know, the technologies truly

supports the teaching and learning. I, for example, I

aside of my facilities and IT direction, I teach a class,

actually, I teach an honor class for middle schoolers. And at

first I was like, wow, this is very interesting, but I think

this is one of the parts that I enjoy a little bit, because my

middle schools, they don't have a strong background in

programming skills. I teach an honor class. It's a Python

class, for example. It's a coding class that's kind of like

my hobby, too. They work in Python and then explore game

design and develop computational skills, thinking skills, pretty

much, but we build projects that go beyond just code. Students

learn how to approach problems like engineers, designers and

also innovators. So in that part, specifically, my intention

is to just be like, Okay, well, teachers need technology to

implement in the classroom. They need computers. They love the

visuals, and technology is not going to go away. And now with

AI

and they, 100% need some of that. I'm sure

the kids have a good time playing in Python and all the

gaming aspects of that. You know, it's interesting when you

can get their attention with things that resonate with them

in order to teach critical thinking and some of these

skills. So grabbing them at the middle school level, I'm sure

that that's a pretty popular thing.

Yeah, it's very popular. And I teach two

trimesters. I start in the second term. Because, you know,

the first term is always like working on my projects, and kind

of crazy for it, so

kind of crazy for it, yep, and I know

that you've also looked at creating some initiatives

around, like a VR program, augmented reality sandbox. Tell

us a little bit about that before we get off of some of the

said tech stuff

that was in my other school. I used to work in

Pacific Palisades, before I worked at River rich. I had more

time back then because my role allows me to be more creative in

my other school. So one example of that is the augmented reality

sandbox, which started with a fun project that I, you know, I

started grabbing different equipment that they were not

using anymore, and I was like, What can I do with this? And so

I came with that idea to just do an augmented reality sandbox,

which became, like a huge success. What I did was I used

materials from around the school that were not using. And I use

an open source software that took me a while to build, but it

was a really, really Success Project. Kids were very

involved. It was kind of like a therapeutic thing for kids to

do. It was in the MATLAB. I used to work in the MATLAB there, and

I also was able to bring the VR program back, and I partnered

with a few people, and then we brought that program back. They

were very interested in that. So I had those two and I think kids

are very into technology, like if you can give them a robe, and

they can go all the way, and that's the part I love. And when

it comes to teaching, if you're really creative with technology,

you can deliver a really good program for kids

listening to all that you do, between

cybersecurity, between facilities, between the IT

infrastructure, teaching. It's kind of a two part question,

what is your organizational structure like? So who do you

report to? Who is your boss? And then who do you have within your

oversight that is helping you do all these things at the school?

Because titles and organization. Structures are two of the things

that I think differ greatly from school to school, and

understanding what that looks like for you there, I think

helps our listeners figure out how you're actually getting all

this stuff done, because it's

impressive. I report directly to head of

school. I am part of the admin team, which allows me to know

what's going on. I have firsthand part of the meeting

and the information that comes from school and the decisions

that are made, so that gives me advantage when it comes to make

decisions around that now, I do have the whole facility scene

that reports directly to me, and I do have two it interns right

now. One is just for the summer, and the other one is being with

us for a year. So that's my team.

So from network support, from break, fix

support, from the Ed Tech Support, it's you, it's

facilities, and these two interns, and that's it. That's

it.

And we outsource a lot of, well, not a lot of

things. I have my MSP, which I rely a lot on them when it comes

to, you know, if there is something to do with cabling, if

I can do it, like often, because I'm on campus, I can do it. But

I mean, sometimes the ticketed system explode with work orders,

so I have to attend to those. And is give and take. If I see

that I'm really busy like that, I cannot handle things. I go to

my MSB so I can get the support that I need. Most of the work

that they do is remote. They have access to my systems, my my

unified console, my Jamf console, with all the devices.

So if I really need help, I reach out, but oftentimes I stay

late, and then I get to do all the things that I'm pending from

that facility side of things, you know, I'm thinking about

printers, copiers, cameras. I'm thinking about all those pieces

that we were talking about, where there is overlap in those

areas. Are the facilities members of the school assisting

in those pieces? Or is that more of you and the facilities people

are really focused on, like, making sure the doors open and

there's lights on in the rooms. Now that you say it, it's pretty

interesting. They do a lot of campus operations. They take

care of campus, which is my main thing for them. Like, you need

to take care of all the needs that are on campus, cleaning,

you know, moving things around or whatever. I rely a lot on my

interns, because they help me with a bunch of things, and I do

that too. So it's kind of like you ask yourself, do you have

time during the day? You have time for lunch? So sometimes I

don't, but that's part of the job. I have also an admin team

that is amazing, and they're very supportive with me, not

that they know how to do my job, but they're very supportive in

that regard, my boss too. She's like, whatever you want, go

ahead.

Yeah, that's so much of what is needed in our

roles is an empathy for what we do? Yeah, and this time of year

in particular, Raphael, I'd love to take a slightly different

tact here, and I'm curious about the you have, like a service

project where you're repurposing older iPads. Can you talk about

that and how that's going?

Yes. So I started this program when I was

in my previous school, you weren't here. At the beginning

of the podcast, I was talking about my background, where I'm

coming from. I'm from Venezuela. And back in 2016 2017 there was

a really bad time in my country, my home country, and people were

struggling. And education, of course, gets impacted by it, and

I have the opportunity to start small donations of tech

equipment and send it to Venezuela. Now, one of my

friends, my all time friends, he works at a foundation, and he's

one of the creators of this foundation that started years

ago. So I talked to him and said, like, Hey, how can I help

you? And he's like, Well, you know, we're struggling with this

and that. So I was able the first time to donate around 50

to 60 iPads, I believe. And oh my God, when you do those

things, you never imagine the impact that that's gonna have,

and when he sent me back all the videos and pictures and where

they distribute all these because they really took good

care of how we're gonna distribute, we're gonna make

each one of these iPads the best of it. And they were all iPads

that. The school, my school wearing is anymore, but they for

them, was the best thing that ever happened. So I started that

process, doing that. And this year, being at Riviera Rich, I

started collecting some of those equipment. And unfortunately,

the body size fire happened, and my previous school where I used

to work burned down to

the ground. Oh, no, that's so terrible. I

have a

friend who works in the technology department

there, and I was like, Hey, I have a few devices that I was

planning on sending back to Venezuela. And then she said,

Well, we don't have anything. We need something, so I donate that

to that school. I really want to keep doing that. I think is a

very important thing to do, not just for organizations, but for

us as human you know, to keep fostering that idea, to keep

helping people in need.

Yeah. I mean, it's incredible, but like,

I volunteer with an organization that has to sometimes manage

virtual board meetings, and this organization is volunteer run,

not a huge budget. And I remember putting a call out to

some of my good friends here in the tech community once I was

hearing that if their teachers ever saw an owl again, there

might be a revolt. And I said, Well, hey, if you have any of

those, and it's incredible, the difference that makes where, you

know, there's a woman who was going through cancer treatment

way up in Canada and couldn't make it to a board meeting, but

having the owl in the room made the experience so much more

memorable, so much better. Yeah, and you know, you guys are like,

Oh Lord, if I ever see another owl, but it made a huge

difference. So I can imagine that amplified by 50 or 60 kids

in Venezuela, or even kids affected by those devastating

fires, it makes a big difference. Something that's

gathering dust in your closet is actually a treasure to somebody

down the street. It's incredible, correct?

Yep, and those programs come to you and you're

so busy that you never see the impact of what that does with

your project management skills. I want to go

back to that, because we talk so often, and I feel like only in

the last couple of years we've been better and more intentional

here in the Atlas community talking about project management

as like a very finite, definitive skill that we in this

space need to have. In particular, you get involved in

capital projects, budgeting, the compliance with what's going on

in the classroom. Tell us a little bit about that, because I

do feel like sometimes there are peers of yours in this space who

are getting a little overwhelmed, like what Bill

said? It's getting intense. There's so much to juggle. So if

they don't have a project management background, maybe

either where they can kind of practice building that muscle.

But let's first start by talking about how you deploy that skill

set in the work that you do.

Great question. So, yes, in addition to the

classroom and infrastructure work facilities too, I also work

hand in hand with the CFO, and we talked a lot about capital

projects, budgeting, compliance. I was actually recently feature

in the Ed Tech magazine for how we approach security budgeting

in a way that balance large scale infrastructures in all the

improvements with classroom innovation. So that means that,

okay, well, I see it a lot with the CFO. And we talked about

like, what does that mean? How we look at life cycles, cost and

how we look. Roi, just making sure that every investment

aligns with both security and educational priorities.

Do you have a chance to sit at the

administrative level at your school to work through some of

these issues? I mean, these are big topics that you're talking

about. So like, Do you often find yourself sitting among the

administration at your school? Do they bring you into those big

conversations early and often?

Absolutely, we have weekly meetings the head of

the school directs the course of the school where we're going.

There are often meetings where we talked about Master projects

that are happening in school, and then from there I go, and

okay, well, let's just talk to the CFO. Let's see where we are.

Where's the three year, five year goals? What do I have right

now in inventory? When is that life cycle is going to end? So

we align all those projects. And the most important thing here is

when you talk about budget, because money doesn't grow in

trees, as we know, and you have to be strategic about how to use

that money that you get every year in your budget, because

every year is different, and things get allocated in a

different asset. So. Yeah, part of the job that I do is to sit

down and they get my input in what it means to Okay, well,

we're taking that direction, and this is the best thing that we

can do for school. When I started, the first time I

started at regret reach school, we transitioned to be a school

with just a computer lab, to be a Mac 101, meaning that every

single student has a device that they use for their learning

experience. That's a huge thing, because you have to manage each

one of them. You have to use, you know, I use Jamf School,

which is great to manage all the devices. And also, I use Jamf

protect, which is endpoint protection for all the schools,

along with other endpoint protection tools that I use

during the school year. So all of that costs money.

So Rafael, you were part of the ALI program and

experienced a great deal of value with that program. Who

would you recommend continues with that program, given the

experiences you've just had, and also, I'm fascinated to see how

you compare yourself to your peers in the alley program.

Given, I don't know what kind of bag of pixie dust you have to

do, all the different things that you are doing,

it's a lot. I know

it is a lot that you are responsible for on top

of teaching. You teach one class. You almost can teach four

at that point, give it the amount of preparation, but you

have this really neat relationship now between what

you've been through with the alley program, your cohort

group, and the communication and the contact that you maintain

with that group, and how does that compare to what you're

going through right now? And please tell us that you actually

have pixie dust, and then you're not this superhero.

No, no. It always comes to Yes, I do, and

you learn from it. So one of the things that I really, really

appreciate being at, at least at the Leadership Institute, was

the collaboration that you have with your peers. It's like

having a lead server with you in it, with all the people in front

of you, and you actually have the time to respond to those

questions. Because that's the other thing. When you're in this

position and you're responsible for a lot of things, you often

don't even have time to ask a question. You have to just do

it. And so being at at least helped me a lot to answer all

those questions and just to establish that relationship with

people, which I really to this day I went to at least two years

ago. To this day, I still talk to people that I met there. We

hear that a lot, yeah, sometimes we chat, sometimes we

collaborate in some ideas. And what are you doing in your

school? Like, I have this issue, how do you solve it or like, how

do you approach this problem? Because we do you think about

the positive things, but you also encounter roadblocks, and

that's when you learn that's when you really take advantage

of the tools that you have. And one of the things that athletes

helped me with is the connection that you establish with all

these people, and all the learning that you get from you

guys, from the leaders of it, I remember Kristina. We met that

there, and just even the conversations that you have that

dinner, those things stick to my mind to this day. So I will

highly recommend the at least Leadership Institute to anybody,

because it's just a really good way to learn how to be a better

leader.

I don't think I've ever thought of the

ALI program as a live listserv, but Raphael, I'm never gonna let

that go. I'm gonna credit you with it, but I'm gonna call it

that from now on, it's gonna be your listserv brought to life.

So thank you for that visual, because I think that that's a

pretty good way of capturing what the Atlas Leadership

Institute is all about,

especially with the way that cohorts are staying

in contact with one another.

Yeah, no, 100%

Yeah, you mentioned dinner. And I think so much of

what happens when we all get together are those conversations

that happen at breakfast, at lunch, at dinner, in the

evenings, when everyone's kind of gathered together and just

sitting around and just kind of like unwinding from the day.

That's where all those connections really come in and

play

out. I was at dinner at some point. I was

like, we're just talking normal. Someone came up with a good

idea. I was like, Hold on, let me take note.

So here's the question. You just said, talking

normal. One of the things that I think the three of us have been

kind of wondering about is, what is normal for you when you are

not at work? What do you do when you've got your off time? Like,

what is it that you're focused on? What. Keeps you saying

there's

a lot of breathing happening,

deep cleansing breaths. Is that what

we're talking about,

deep breathing. And I have my husband, which is

an amazing support, my dog too, and like the flexibility that I

have that's important, going back to the leadership at your

school, another advice that I have for everybody, like, look

for leadership that is going to support you and the things that

you do, because that's really important, that gives you that

work life balance that you sometimes need. Right now, I'm

in this podcast because I was able to stay home, because

you're in the East Coast, right? And then I'm in the west coast.

So it was super early for me. This is the in service week, and

I talked to my boss yesterday. I was like, listen, I really want

to do this podcast, and we haven't had a time to sit

together and have a meeting with her. And she was like, go ahead,

Rafa, do what you need to do? Yeah, you don't need to be here.

Just take your time. So those are things that also allows me

to have a life outside my

work. Absolutely. What's your boss's

name? Let's give her a shout out. Chris.

Chris, Broderick, if you're hearing me,

Chris, I'm talking really good about you.

Chris, thank you for the flexibility, because

he did great, and we are in love with both him and your school.

So thank you for creating a space where he could have a

quiet moment to join us on this podcast. It was awesome. Yeah,

more leadership. I mean, I think that obviously every tech leader

has a different situation, but I will say that when they have

supportive leadership, I can see it in their shoulders. I meet a

lot of you guys through the community, and I can just tell

how much weight a tech leader is carrying, and also how much they

share with their leadership sometimes. So it doesn't usually

surprise me when I talk with someone like you and you say, my

leadership is great, and when I talk to some other peers who

say, Yeah, I'm struggling, we're going through a transition. So I

think it makes a huge difference in just your overall view of the

world and whether you can handle all of the weight that you're

carrying.

Yep, at the end of the day, listen, my role is

about creating an ecosystem for all the people involved, the

students and faculty, where innovation happens. Security is

super important for me and the human connection all work

together. When I was talking to you, you asked me questions

like, then, not just you. I have a lot of people ask me the same

questions, like, how you do it all? Yep, well, it's simple,

whether I'm in the server room configuring network switches or

in a classroom, guiding students or asking questions when they

come to my office, or even out of campus, ensuring the

facilities are safe, or if they're missing the trash can.

It's all part of the same mission, and it's making sure

our school is future ready and centering on student growth.

That's my take

that is beautiful and simple and pretty

clear. I love that. That's the sound bite for the ages. Rafael,

thank you so much for being with us today, for giving all this

time and for just sharing that beautifully simple mission. I

think we're all trying to reach for that, aren't we, guys,

indeed, little bit of Nirvana there, exactly.

Thank you so much.

This has been talking technology with Atlas, produced

by the Association of technology leaders in independent schools.

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